Bettona

Bettona sits on a hill north of the Colli Martani, looking across the cultivated plain toward Perugia. The Etruscans built here in the seventh century BC, and Bettona remains the only known Etruscan settlement east of the Tiber. Stretches of polygonal walls from that period are still visible at the base of the medieval circuit, mixed with later Roman blocks.

The town became a municipium under Augustus, declined during the barbarian invasions, was sacked by Totila in 548, and rebuilt as a self-governing commune by the late twelfth century. Papal rule held from 1648 to unification. The Pinacoteca Civica, housed in the Palazzetto del Podestà on Piazza Cavour, keeps two paintings by Pietro Perugino (Sant'Antonio da Padova and Madonna della Misericordia), tabernacle panels attributed to El Greco, and Etruscan funerary stones and architectural terracottas from the territory. The olive groves below town carry the Città dell'Olio designation.